Good morning.

Sunday brings mostly sunny skies and a high of seventy-six to Whitewater. Sunrise this morning was at 5:20 a.m., and sunset will be at 8:37 p.m. The moon is a waning crescent with 45% of the its visible disk illuminated.

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind arrives on this day in 1936:

In 1926, Mitchell was forced to quit her job as a reporter at the Atlanta Journal to recover from a series of physical injuries. With too much time on her hands, Mitchell soon grew restless. Working on a Remington typewriter, a gift from her second husband, John R. Marsh, in their cramped one-bedroom apartment, Mitchell began telling the story of an Atlanta belle named Pansy O’Hara.

In tracing Pansy’s tumultuous life from the antebellum South through the Civil War and into the Reconstruction era, Mitchell drew on the tales she had heard from her parents and other relatives, as well as from Confederate war veterans she had met as a young girl. While she was extremely secretive about her work, Mitchell eventually gave the manuscript to Harold Latham, an editor from New York’s MacMillan Publishing. Latham encouraged Mitchell to complete the novel, with one important change: the heroine’s name. Mitchell agreed to change it to Scarlett, now one of the most memorable names in the history of literature.

Published in 1936, Gone with the Wind caused a sensation in Atlanta and went on to sell millions of copies in the United States and throughout the world. While the book drew some criticism for its romanticized view of the Old South and its slaveholding elite, its epic tale of war, passion and loss captivated readers far and wide. By the time Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937, a movie project was already in the works. The film was produced by Hollywood giant David O. Selznick, who paid Mitchell a record-high $50,000 for the film rights to her book.

Here are scenes from the 1939 film, famous but certainly dated, too:

Good morning.

We’ve a day of showers and thunderstorms for Whitewater today, with a high of seventy.

Perhaps you’ve had coffee this morning, as I have. You may have wondered: what’s really in that cup? Wonder no more:

Good morning.

Whitewater’s week ends with an eighty percent chance of showers and a high of seventy-six.

On this day in 1953, an automotive beginning:

…workers at a Chevrolet plant in Flint, Michigan, assemble the first Corvette, a two-seater sports car that would become an American icon. The first completed production car rolled off the assembly line two days later, one of just 300 Corvettes made that year.

The idea for the Corvette originated with General Motors’ pioneering designer Harley J. Earl, who in 1951 began developing plans for a low-cost American sports car that could compete with Europe’s MGs, Jaguars and Ferraris. The project was eventually code-named “Opel.” In January 1953, GM debuted the Corvette concept car at its Motorama auto show at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. It featured a fiberglass body and a six-cylinder engine and according to GM, was named for the “trim, fleet naval vessel that performed heroic escort and patrol duties during World War II.” The Corvette was a big hit with the public at Motorama and GM soon put the roadster into production.

Today’s anniversary of the Corvette is just the lead-in for the final day of Puzzability’s Assembly Line series.

Puzzability concludes its series about cars:

Assembly Line
This week—summer road trip! For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the make and model of an old car.

Example:
Body’s energy important in acupuncture / penultimate word in many fairy tales / Hogwarts mail carrier / scraped into, as a pattern in glass / compete / large often-canvas bag

Answer:
Chevrolet Chevette (chi / ever / owl / etched / vie / tote)

Here’s the puzzle for Friday:

Work by O’Neill or Simon / lip-synched / large area of Northern Ireland that gave its name to an overcoat.

Good morning.

We’ll have about a one-third chance of thunderstorms today, with a high of eighty-five, and light west winds of 5 to 10 mph.

At 4:30 PM this afternoon, there will be a meeting of the Community Development Authority.

Like many others, I’ve always liked the science fiction film Independence Day. It’s simply a popcorn movie, not to be be taken seriously, but rather enjoyed despite occasional silliness. Yesterday, I came across a good-natured parody of the film from Honest Trailers by Screen Junkies. Clever, I think —

On this day in 1950, Pres. Truman responds to Stalinist aggression:

On June 27, 1950, President Harry S. Truman announces that he is ordering U.S. air and naval forces to South Korea to aid the democratic nation in repulsing an invasion by communist North Korea. The United States was undertaking the major military operation, he explained, to enforce a United Nations resolution calling for an end to hostilities, and to stem the spread of communism in Asia. In addition to ordering U.S. forces to Korea, Truman also deployed the U.S. 7th Fleet to Formosa (Taiwan) to guard against invasion by communist China and ordered an acceleration of military aid to French forces fighting communist guerrillas in Vietnam.

Stalin’s support of invasion and a years-long war lead to the deaths of over one-million people on all sides.

Puzzability continues its series about cars, running from 6.24 through 6.28:

Assembly Line
This week—summer road trip! For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the make and model of an old car.

Example:
Body’s energy important in acupuncture / penultimate word in many fairy tales / Hogwarts mail carrier / scraped into, as a pattern in glass / compete / large often-canvas bag

Answer:
Chevrolet Chevette (chi / ever / owl / etched / vie / tote)

Here’s the puzzle for Thursday:

Negative reply / secluded Hindu retreats / machine that makes bundles of hay.

Good morning.

We’ll have a sixty percent chance of thunderstorms today, mostly in the morning, with a high of eighty-five.

Downtown Whitewater’s board meets this morning at 8 AM, and the Fire-Rescue Task Force will meet later today at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1948, America begins the Berlin Airlift:

U.S. and British pilots begin delivering food and supplies by airplane to Berlin after the city is isolated by a Soviet Union blockade.

Though some in U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s administration called for a direct military response to this aggressive Soviet move, Truman worried such a response would trigger another world war. Instead, he authorized a massive airlift operation under the control of General Lucius D. Clay, the American-appointed military governor of Germany. The first planes took off from England and western Germany on June 26, loaded with food, clothing, water, medicine and fuel.

By July 15, an average of 2,500 tons of supplies was being flown into the city every day. The massive scale of the airlift made it a huge logistical challenge and at times a great risk. With planes landing at Tempelhof Airport every four minutes, round the clock, pilots were being asked to fly two or more round-trip flights every day, in World War II planes that were sometimes in need of repair.

The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949, having earned the scorn of the international community for subjecting innocent men, women and children to hardship and starvation. The airlift–called die Luftbrucke or “the air bridge” in German–continued until September 1949, for a total delivery of more than 1.5 million tons of supplies and a total cost of over $224 million.

Puzzability continues its series about cars, running from 6.24 to 6.28:

Assembly Line
This week—summer road trip! For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the make and model of an old car.

Example:
Body’s energy important in acupuncture / penultimate word in many fairy tales / Hogwarts mail carrier / scraped into, as a pattern in glass / compete / large often-canvas bag

Answer:
Chevrolet Chevette (chi / ever / owl / etched / vie / tote)

Here’s the puzzle for Wednesday:

Upper limb / toothed wheel that’s part of a larger machine / paper package amount / king of the jungle.

Good morning.

Whitewater will hold a public meeting this afternoon, beginning at 4:30 PM, to reveal plans for the reconstruction of the downtown’s East Gate Way. Following open house introductions, two identical presentations will take place at 5 to 5:30 PM and 6 to 6:30 PM. At the Cravath Lakefront Community Building.

The Urban Forestry Commission will also be meeting at 4:30 PM today.

There’s great inspiration in tenacity, in refusing to yield, and in making the most of the present. I’d say the Chicago Blackhawks understand that very well. Through those virtues they overcame a 2-1 game deficit in an astonishingly brief time (17 seconds!), to win not just a game, but the Stanley Cup:

So very well done.

Puzzability has a series about cars, running from 6.24 to 6.28:

Assembly Line
This week—summer road trip! For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the make and model of an old car.

Example:
Body’s energy important in acupuncture / penultimate word in many fairy tales / Hogwarts mail carrier / scraped into, as a pattern in glass / compete / large often-canvas bag

Answer:
Chevrolet Chevette (chi / ever / owl / etched / vie / tote)

Here’s the puzzle for Tuesday:

Tiney utensil / slang for great, like a comedy jam / Boeing 787, for one.